The to field contains an email address. You can not send an email To: "Bill Smith" as there is absolutely no routing information for the receiving mail server to send the message to bill.

But I have no idea what you are suggesting in regards to "selecting" when I type in the TO: firld the entire name and address is searched to return matches.

My Contacts list has a name column for me to look at to select who I am sending my mail to. If the address book record has a display name set then that is inserted into the To field along with the mail address.

I do not understand the question.

It sounds to me like your contacts don't have the First, Last or Display Name fields populated in Address Book, so they aren't read by the autofill search process. This usually happens when a contact list is incorrectly or incompletely imported to TB from e.g. a csv file.

I was thinking more like Window Live mail where you enter only a name and the program picks up the email address from the file (address book) to send it. Addresses still show in sent mail

Thunderbird always shows the address in the TO: , not just the name.

TB picks up the name if you have the contact fields filled in, and it displays the name and address in the Write window because some 'names' have several addresses.

I understand the reasoning you described but I don't know of too many names with multiple addresses except perhaps if someone has both business and personal address in which case I should think it would be handled differently. I'm not trying to beat a dead horse. If what I described is not available then so be it. Perhaps future revisions may be a little more elegant. Thunderbird is still an excellent program.

This should close my request. Thank you for your assistance.